Why should you care if you're feelin' good?
Well, take the long way home
Take the long way home
Somehow those words by Supertramp from the song "Take The Long Way Home" seem apt when I'm doing this walking for charity lark.
I used to take any shortcut going. Any passage that cut the distance between myself and home was a good passage. Now I take passages that take me in the wrong direction and it's deliberate because that all adds to the mileage.
Yesterday for example instead of walking from a particular point to my home which would have been about 200 yards, I veered down a passage that went within about 30 yards of my garden but which had no access to it. It came out on another road and added a good threequarters of a mile to my walk. This is something I now embrace so I always Take The Long Way Home. Short cuts now upset me.
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As you know I like to collect silly comments and silly quiz answers from television programmes. This one comes from The Chase with the wonderful Bradley Walsh. A lady contestant was asked. The Norfolk coast is a breeding ground for which of the following animals? She had three options which were seals, whales or sharks and she went for sharks.
Now occasionally a shark is spotted in UK waters but it is a pretty rare event and the thought of Norfolk breeding them is just plain ridiculous unless this contestant thought that we did it to terrorise the rest of the country - now there's an idea!
The seal (for that was obviously the correct answer) breeding season attracts big crowds to areas of the Norfolk coast with Winterton being a favourite breeding ground. Perhaps this lady needs to pay a visit. Mind you she would have to avoid the breeding whales covering up the beaches and the crumbling cliffs above her.
Then we had Anglia news where we were told that there has been an arrest for the murder of a Peterborough youngster over 20 years ago. We were informed that the body had been strangled. I'm not sure that's possible although it might be technically correct. We were then told that the defendant pleaded not guilty to murder at the Old Bailey. I'm not sure any murders have ever taken place at the Old Bailey. Trials by the bucketload but murders - no.
I remember a court case when I worked for the Lowestoft Journal many moons ago. It referred to a court case and a young reporter who shall remain nameless (mainly because I can't recall their name) wrote "a man was fined £50 for eating a driving licence at Lowestoft Magistrates Court." I'm not sire what was funnier - the thought of him eating it in the court or the fact that he ate a driving licence in the first place.
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Last night I thought I would put together a Spotify playlist of my favourite Beatles songs for my grandson to listen to. It was a tough task as I had a list of over 60 that I love and putting them into an order was difficult. It's not just the music that makes many of them so important to me. It's often where I was when they were released, what the lyrics mean to me and what part they play in the history of pop music and also the part they play in the history of the Beatles.
Putting a top 20 in order was also tough and I'm sure that over time this might change. Eventually, after much soul searching (well a cup of tea), I decided that my favourite Beatles song is "Help." It's an almost perfect pop song in itself but when you listen to the lyrics and link them to John Lennon's life, it is a very poignant song.
Other songs in the top five are directly or indirectly about Liverpool. They ooze class. Penny Lane comes in at number two because of its evocation on Liverpool of the past and the fact that we have driven down this road many times. Then there's Strawberry Fields Forever - again a song about Lennon's childhood. I can't wait to visit the newly refurbished and set out Strawberry Fields when we are next in Liverpool. Eleanor Rigby is another superb pop song that is so deep and then there's Let It Be - a very personal Paul McCartney song about his mother who died when he was very young. For years I thought the Mother Mary mentioned in the lyrics was a nun. That is until I realised it was McCartney's mother which gave it added meaning.
Some of my other choices might surprise you a little but listening back I realise that most of them are love songs, charged with emotion. Here's the full list form one to 20.
1 Help
2 Penny Lane
3 Eleanor Rigby
4 Let It Be
5 Strawberry Fields Forever
6 The Long and Winding Road
7 She Loves You
8 I Will
9 In My Life
10 Across the Universe
11 A Day In The Life
12 Yesterday
13 Here There and Everywhere
14 And I Love Her
15 PS I Love You
16 Fool On The Hill
17 Nowhere Man
18 Michelle
19 She's Leaving Home
20 Get Back